The Secret He Must Claim Read online

  She was naked and Cortez’s breath rushed from his lungs as he was transfixed by the sight of her. The pale spring sunshine streaming through the window bathed her body in a pearlescent light so that she looked ethereal and so beautiful that he felt blinded, as if he had looked directly at the sun. Her fair hair cascaded down her back like a river of gold. She reminded him of a painting of the goddess Aphrodite with her alabaster skin and perfect, small round breasts tipped with rose. He moved his gaze over her flat stomach and narrow hips to the neat cluster of pale gold curls between her thighs, and he was so hard that his arousal was almost painful.

  Time seemed to be suspended, but in reality only a few seconds could have passed before Elin snatched up her robe from the bed and wrapped it around her. ‘What are you doing in here?’ she demanded. ‘You have no right to barge into my private rooms.’

  Her face was flushed and Cortez had noticed before she’d covered her body with her robe that a pink stain had spread down her throat and over her breasts. The ability to blush at will was no doubt a useful tool in her armoury of feminine wiles, he thought cynically.

  ‘Actually, I have the right to enter any room in my house,’ he corrected her, struggling to bring his raging libido under control. ‘I knocked but you can’t have heard me.’

  She crossed her arms over her chest, but not before he’d noticed the prominent outline of her nipples beneath her silk robe. The knowledge that she was as much at the mercy of their mutual desire as he was did not appease his grim mood.

  ‘You said I could stay at Cuckmere Hall while I arrange to move into other accommodation,’ she said stiffly. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Why did you lie about your baby’s date of birth? The nanny told me your son was born in December, not October as you told me.’

  She shrugged. ‘Why do you care?’

  He crossed the room in a couple of strides to stand in front of her, and felt an unholy satisfaction when she shrank from him. Good, he wanted to rattle her. ‘Tell me the truth, damn you.’

  ‘How can I tell you the truth when you threatened to sue me for slander?’ she snapped. ‘Harry was born in December, nine months after we slept together. Work the maths out for yourself.’

  ‘But that does not necessarily mean I am his father.’ He refused to believe her claim without proof. ‘You might have slept with other men at around the same time that you had sex with me. Statistically, the chance of a condom failing to be effective is very small.’

  ‘You are the only man I’ve ever had sex with,’ she said in a taut voice with an underlying note of hurt that Cortez dismissed with a sardonic laugh.

  ‘Your pretence of innocence is ridiculous when details of your love-life are frequently reported by the gutter press.’

  Elin drew a sharp breath as if he had struck her. But she quickly controlled the tremble of her soft mouth, and her blue eyes were clear and perhaps a little too bright when she lifted her head and met his gaze. ‘Believe what you like. I don’t give a damn what you think of me. But I’d appreciate it if you would get out of my room and at least have the decency to respect my privacy. I assure you I won’t remain at Cuckmere for any longer than it takes me to find somewhere for me and Harry to live.’

  ‘The only way to resolve the issue of the child’s paternity is to have a DNA test. And if he is my son, you won’t be taking him anywhere.’

  ‘You can’t stop me,’ she flared. ‘I’ll deny you are his father. You made it clear that you don’t want a child. It will be better for Harry to grow up knowing nothing about you than for him to discover that you didn’t want him.’

  ‘If you refuse to allow a DNA test I will apply to the court for the right to discover if I have a child.’ He could not hide his frustration as he raked his hair off his brow and despised the hard clench his body gave when he breathed in her scent: sensual jasmine perfume and a fresh lemon fragrance in her hair. ‘I never said I would not want my son,’ he said gruffly. ‘But I am suspicious that you are now backtracking your claim, perhaps because a paternity test will prove you are a liar.’

  Cortez’s anger simmered. He told himself it was because he wanted Elin to give him a straight answer, but deep down he acknowledged the far simpler truth was that he wanted her. He couldn’t dismiss the image of her naked body from his mind, and knowing that her dove-grey silk robe was all that hid her slender beauty from his gaze was sending him quietly mad.

  ‘If Harry is mine, why didn’t you name me as his father when he was born?’ he said abruptly.

  She laughed, but it was not a happy laugh, it was cold and bitter, and the sound of it made something twist in his gut. ‘How could I name you? I didn’t know your full name, or anything about you.’ She took him by surprise when she pushed past him. He followed her out of the bedroom and into the sitting room and watched her open a drawer in the bureau.

  ‘This is Harry’s birth certificate.’ She handed him the document and he noticed that a blank space had been left under the section headed ‘Name and Surname of Father’. ‘Do you have any idea how humiliated I felt when I registered his birth and I didn’t know the name of my baby’s father? All I knew was that I’d had sex with someone called Cortez, but how could I know you were in fact my adoptive father’s real son? And as you didn’t stick around the next morning I had no way of contacting you when I found out I was pregnant.’

  Temper had turned her eyes to the deep, dark blue of an ocean. ‘You blamed Ralph for treating your mother badly by abandoning her when she was pregnant, but your behaviour was even worse than your father’s. You knew who I was, and you could easily have got in contact with me. But you didn’t because I was just a one-night stand and you did not care about how I might be feeling, even though you must have realised when we had sex that it was my first time.’

  Her words dropped into the room like a pebble thrown into a pool, shattering the calm surface and creating ripples. For a few seconds the effect on Cortez was just as shattering, before he remembered all those goddamned press stories about her busy love-life.

  ‘What I have realised is that you are a fantasist,’ he said grimly. ‘You are also delusional if you think I’d believe you were a virgin after you had invited me into your bedroom and told me with that pretty mouth of yours that you wanted me. I can’t deny it was convenient that you kept contraceptives in the bedside drawer, but the fact that you were prepared for sex suggests you’d had previous lovers.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t judge you for being sexually active and I do not hold double standards, as you accused me. But I deplore lying, which is why I insist on a DNA test, which will prove if I am your baby’s father or if your claim is another lie.’

  Elin had turned so pale that he wondered if she was going to faint. Or was it another ploy designed to gain his sympathy? Cortez thought cynically.

  ‘I’ve already explained that on the night of my birthday party my behaviour was affected by a drug that I was unaware I had taken,’ she said with a quiet dignity that disturbed him more than it should have done. ‘My drink had been spiked with a date-rape drug that made me unable to control my thoughts and reactions.’

  Anger growled in his voice. ‘Are you suggesting I slipped you a drug with the intention of sexually assaulting you?’

  ‘No, I know it wasn’t you who spiked my drink. But, all the same, it was the effects of the drug that led me to have sex with you.’

  ‘Really?’ He disguised his fury behind a mocking smile. ‘So you’re saying that if you hadn’t been drugged you would not have wanted me to kiss you? I assume you are not under the influence of any kind of behaviour-altering drug now?’

  She looked puzzled. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then let us put your theory to the test.’ He reached for her and watched her eyes widen as she realised his intention. But, curiously, she did not try to evade him, or perhaps he was s
imply too quick as he pulled her into his arms and bent his head.

  Her mouth was a sweet promise that had driven him to distraction and a sensual memory that had disturbed his dreams for too long. He covered her lips with his and kissed her with a hunger and need that should have appalled him if he had been able to think. But he was lost the instant she opened her mouth beneath his and allowed him to probe his tongue into her sweetness. Triumph surged through Cortez as he felt the tension ease from her body and she melted into him, soft against his hardness, her surrender a delicious victory that he was determined to savour.

  * * *

  It had been so long. That was the only thought in Elin’s mind as Cortez claimed her mouth with bold confidence and kissed her with devastating passion. It was more than a year since she had been in his arms, but it felt like a lifetime of loneliness, waiting for him, dreaming of him, secretly yearning for him. Now he was here, as dark and dangerously attractive as she remembered him, and she was incapable of resisting his mastery. Her traitorous body melted with the first brush of his lips against hers, and when he deepened the kiss and demanded her response the fire inside her became an inferno.

  He drew her closer to him, crushing her against his whipcord body and making her aware of his strength and his desire. His arousal jabbed between her thighs, and with a low moan she stood on tiptoe so that she could press her pelvis against the hard bulge outlined beneath his jeans. He muttered something incomprehensible as he clamped his hand on her bottom, and when he kissed her again he thrust his tongue into her mouth in an erotic mimicry of sex.

  The kiss went on and on and she never wanted it to end. There was nothing but heat and flame and searing need. Hers. His. Whatever Cortez might think of her, the potent force of his arousal betrayed his hunger.

  She was stunned when he released her and dropped his hands to his sides. Nothing made sense, not the thunder of her pulse, or the grim fury on his beautiful face, or the voice from the doorway.

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ the nanny murmured, sounding embarrassed, before she stepped back into the corridor and closed the sitting room door behind her.

  Barbara’s timely interruption had been a godsend, Elin told herself as her memory stormed back and brought with it the humiliating knowledge that Cortez had kissed her to prove a point. She stared at him because she could not help herself. Because he was a sorcerer and she was trapped in his spell. She braced herself for his taunts. Dear heaven, after the way she’d responded to his kiss he probably thought she was a nymphomaniac. But, to her surprise, he broke eye contact first and she had an odd feeling that he was as shocked as she was by the tumultuous intensity of that kiss.

  ‘We will take Harry to London today to have the DNA test carried out at a clinic which provides an express paternity testing service,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ve booked us an appointment, and they promise to have the result within eight hours of the test. How soon can you be ready to leave?’

  Elin realised it would be pointless to refuse the paternity test when Cortez had stated he would go to court to force her to agree. But she was infuriated by his arrogant belief that if he ordered her to jump she would ask how high. She had dozed for an hour this morning and woken with a headache, the result, no doubt, of her sleepless night. It was likely her shivery feeling was due to her getting so cold in the vineyard last night, she assured herself. The frost candles might have protected the vines but it had taken hours for her to warm up after her moonlit vigil. She dismissed her concern that she could be developing another kidney infection, which had been a recurrent problem since she’d given birth to Harry.

  ‘Why are you in such a rush for the test? Three days ago you refused to consider the possibility that you could be Harry’s father. I’ve told you I won’t make any financial demands on you and you can just walk away and forget about the night we spent together, as I had pretty much done until you turned up at Cuckmere Hall.’

  ‘You did not appear to have forgotten me when I kissed you just now,’ he said sardonically.

  She felt heat bloom on her face and silently cursed her fair skin that blushed so easily.

  Cortez swung his gaze to the bureau where she kept Harry’s birth certificate. He picked up the two passports that were lying in the drawer and studied them. ‘Were you planning to take Harry abroad as you have a passport for him?’

  ‘I’ve been invited to my friend’s wedding in Rhodes and I had to apply for a passport for Harry so that I can take him abroad.’ She frowned. ‘When I met you at my birthday party I assumed you were one of Virginia’s friends.’

  He slipped both passports into his pocket. ‘We’ll take these to London with us. The DNA clinic might need to see them for identity verification. Do you know your brother’s whereabouts?’

  Elin had been about to demand that he give her the passports, but she was distracted by his question.

  ‘Jarek should have returned to Saunderson’s Bank in Japan,’ Cortez continued. ‘But I have been informed by the bank’s manager that he failed to turn up for work.’

  ‘I’m sure there’s a good reason,’ she said quickly. ‘Perhaps his flight from England was delayed.’ Elin silently acknowledged a more likely explanation was that Jarek had been on a drinking binge and was holed up in his London apartment in one of his black moods. But she was certainly not going to tell Cortez of her suspicion. However, it was vital that she went to London to try and talk some sense into her brother before he was sacked from his job.

  ‘I suppose it makes sense to have the DNA test as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘I can be ready to leave in an hour.’

  Cortez gave her a speculative look but fortunately he did not ask why she had suddenly changed her mind. ‘Make it half an hour,’ was all he said as he walked over to the door.

  Truly he was the most self-centred man she’d ever met. She was tempted to wipe that smug look from his face before she remembered his threat last night when she had been goaded beyond endurance and had tried to slap him. To her eternal shame, an image came into her mind of being held across his knee while he administered a spanking, and the warmth that flared on her face was almost as hot as the molten sensation pooling between her legs.

  Elin was shocked by the intensity of her sexual arousal. It had taken her body many weeks to recover from giving birth, and the effort of looking after a baby, the night feeds, lack of sleep and a fog of hormones clouding her brain meant that sex simply had not been on her radar. But one look at Cortez and it was all she could think about. She realised he was giving her an odd look and prayed he could not read her mind.

  ‘You’ve obviously never had anything to do with babies,’ she muttered. ‘Taking a small child anywhere with all the paraphernalia they need is like a military operation.’

  His dark eyes bored into her. ‘I haven’t witnessed you taking care of your son on either of my visits to Cuckmere Hall. Maybe you find motherhood boring compared to your exciting social life. It seems to me that you leave Harry with his nanny most of the time.’

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, Elin was still seething over Cortez’s comments when he drove them to London in his car. During the journey she maintained a frosty silence and he seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts. The nanny, who was sitting in the back of the car next to Harry in his baby seat, made a couple of attempts at conversation but soon gave up.

  Elin had asked Barbara to accompany them to London, thinking she might need the nanny to look after Harry while she searched for her brother in the bars near to his home in Notting Hill, where he was a regular customer. She was relieved when she received a text message from Jarek saying he was on a flight to Japan. It was one thing less to worry about. She suggested that Barbara might like to take the afternoon off to visit her daughter who lived in Greenwich. Cortez pulled over outside a Tube station to drop Barbara off, before driving on to the private
clinic in central London.

  It did not take long for the samples to be collected which would be analysed for the DNA test, and afterwards they drove to the townhouse in Kensington. Cortez had decreed that they would stay in London overnight while they waited for the result of the paternity test.

  Walking into the house, Elin was swamped by memories of when she had slept with Cortez on her birthday a year ago. She was agonisingly aware of him as he carried Harry in his baby seat from the car. Her lips felt tender from where he had kissed her earlier, and when she flicked her tongue over them she could still taste him.

  She was glad when he opened his laptop and told her that he intended to get on with some work. Her head was pounding, and although Harry was usually a placid baby he was fretful all afternoon and she couldn’t settle him. As she paced up and down the nursery with the inconsolable baby in her arms she decided that she must be a bad mother, as Cortez had implied.

  ‘Why does he keep crying?’ Cortez asked when he walked into the kitchen and found her struggling to make up a bottle of baby formula with one hand while she jiggled Harry on her hip. ‘Could he be ill?’

  ‘He’s just a bit colicky. Babies cry because it’s their only way of communicating,’ she said shortly. She felt her tension ratchet up another notch as she tried to feed Harry and he refused to take the teat into his mouth.

  ‘You don’t feed him from your breast?’ Cortez commented.

  ‘I wasn’t able to.’ It was another failure that weighed on her conscience but she was in no mood to explain that she had been fighting for her life immediately after Harry’s birth. Although she had tried to breastfeed him when she’d come out of Intensive Care, her body hadn’t produced enough milk.

  ‘I didn’t realise you were an expert in childcare,’ she said to Cortez sarcastically. ‘It’s a pity you weren’t around when Harry was born and you could have helped to look after him.’

  To her relief Harry finally stopped crying and took his feed. When he finished his bottle she carried him up to the nursery and placed him in his cot. Her headache was worse and she had developed a severe pain in her lower back as well as a high temperature. A phone call to her GP in Sussex confirmed her suspicion that she had all the symptoms of another kidney infection, and she was advised to start the course of antibiotics which she’d been prescribed to treat a recurring infection.